Creating a 3D Gingerbread House

Every holiday season when I was younger, my family and I would make gingerbread houses and deliver them to families in the community. My wife and I have decided to continue the tradition (although we haven’t gotten to the ‘bake it yourself’ stage that my mom was at) and the other night we gathered together to build the gingerbread house.

As I was in the process of creating it my mind was almost immediately drawn to the concept of a gingerbread house in combination with 3D visualization. I realized that I could put together something simple and make a sort of Christmas card in video form.

A few hours later and this was my result:

A few comments on this video. First of all, because it was for a Christmas card and not for a paying client, I took a few short cuts. I found the gingerbread house model on Sketchup and made a few alterations so I can’t really take credit for that. I also wanted to make a drop style animation for all of the gingerbread pieces like I have done in the past but I realized that it would have taken hours longer so I simply did the clip plane feature in Lumion.

Also, for those of you who have been wondering when you would ever use a ‘snow’ feature in a 3D modeling/animation software? Here you go!

Regardless, I with all of you a Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of the year!

-Sam